Wall-to-Wall Carpeting Is Back, and Other Surprises from ICFF

For three days in May, New York City does its best to show up and show out for design. While there are events all over the city for Design Week, one of the main draws is ICFF, a massive furniture and design trade show held in the cavernous sprawl of the Javits Center. In addition to the general exhibitors, the Javits Center was also the site of WantedDesign’s showcase and The Crossroads, which featured up and coming designers, student work, and some of the more exciting projects I saw.

But before throwing myself into the fray at the Javits, I stopped at Artemest Galleria in Chelsea to see an entirely unexpected installation by Dimorestudio. Join me on my journey. 

A little taste of Italy (and wall to wall carpeting) comes to Chelsea 

Generally speaking, most galleries are blank white cubes, essentially meant to serve as open air vitrines for the work within. At Artemest Galleria in Chelsea, Milan’s Dimorestudio transformed the space into something warm, inviting, moody, and sensual—the lobby of an improbable, erotic office building or a would-be lothario’s penthouse suite. Emiliano Salci and Britt Moran took inspiration from movies The Apartment and, somewhat surprisingly, Nine to Five—two particular examples of the American office aesthetic, seen here with a decidedly Italian twist. (That Nine to Five is ultimately a second-wave feminist revenge fantasy about sexual harassment and male chauvinist pigs tracks with the general mood set by Dimore’s interpretation of an American office.)

The furniture itself was breathtaking, but the most arresting piece in this installation was carpet—not a tasteful flokati here and there—but wall-to-wall, like your grandparent’s rec room, covering the entire gallery floor. Designed by Pierre Frey, the carpet was meant to evoke a timeworn surface, and to me, it looked like a forest floor.

A standout at Artemest was the lighting. Consider the Pizzo floor lamp, a lacquered wood pole festooned with rotating brass arms and bulbs covered with floaty lace lampshades. Perched in the window, atop a platform covered in low-pile magenta carpet, the lamp caught my attention in a way that most lighting does not; playful and elegant and a little bit naughty, the Pizzo anchors itself in the space like a stripper pole—secured to the floor and the ceiling like a tension rod.